half asleep in a Fake Empire

The Madmen Across the Water

16 May 2018 | James Porteous | Hawkins Bay Dispatch

Whether one believes in the notion of ‘deep state’ or not, it is obvious, as the author states below, that the actions of the current president of the United States are rarely really and truly ‘impulsive.’

How could it be any other way? It is logical or even possible that a nation’s ‘foreign policy’ could be decided via Twitter? When trillions of dollars in stocks and shares are at stake? Trillions.

Of course not. It is a patently absurd notion.

In truth, the US is already ‘at war,’ with Iran, Russia, China, Venezuela, North Korea… the list goes on and on. The so-called ‘economic sanctions’ are just that: so-called.

The US is knee-deep in a concerted and very public ‘policy’ to control the economies of other nations to the benefit of one nation.

Even the ‘denuclearization’ talks with North Korea are little more than juvenile pantomimes, carefully choreographed public pissing matches framed to look like possible ‘progress’ that is always thwarted by ‘them.’

Was there ever any promise, hope or notion that the US would remove its vast cache of nuclear weapons from South Korea?

It is always ‘them’ trying to disrupt the ‘level playing field’. Always ‘them’ who must get rid of their nuclear weapons or tariffs or ‘unfair’ trade practices. Never the Madmen in the virtual bully pulpit.

In the past such play-acting would take place behind the scenes, with ‘diplomats’ working tirelessly behind the scenes to control the destiny of other, ‘weaker’ nations.

Today, everything is right there, in the open. It is not reported in the news as anything other than acts of ‘destiny’ or further concrete proof of ‘them trying to take advantage of us’ (!) but it is all there. All you have to do is look.

And if you do take a moment to look, if you look at the way other nations are ‘looking’ back across he water, you will see that the charade has almost run its course. There is no longer any percentage in Europe or anyone else to bother cowering to the whims of the Madmen Across the Water.

The rest of the world has moved on, leaving behind a nation of potholes, near-death experiences, a pathetic ‘left-wing’ rendered impotent by greed and a Silicon Valley on the verge of sliding into the ocean.

At this point it does not matter which nation the United States manages to push into actual war. It will only take one ‘belligerent’ to start a modern-day version of ‘the domino theory’ that will, or may already has, provide the Madmen across the water with one last opportunity to level the playing field once and for all.

One of the most outstanding features of a truly standing-out Trump Presidency to date is how precisely the actual policy developments, when we clear away the deliberate smoke and mirrors of tweets and scandal, follow a basic strategy of Washington geopolitics going back to at least 1992.

This is the case in the latest unfortunate and quite illegal unilateral decision to leave the Iran nuclear agreement. This is also the case in the relentless Cold War-style demonization campaign against Russia and the deployment of insidious new sanctions. This is also the case with the looming trade war the Trump Administration has initiated with the Peoples’ Republic of China.

Contrary to a widely-held belief that US President Trump acts only out of impulse or is being unpredictable, I believe that the opposite is the case. Strategic geopolitical policies of the Trump Administration are a response, not of the President himself, but rather of the powers that be, the permanent establishment who actually control what is sometimes called the Deep State. The geopolitics of that policy determines to a large degree who they allow to be President.

The first official formulation of today’s Washington foreign policy came in 1992 when Dick Cheney was Defense Secretary under Bush senior. The Soviet Union had collapsed and Bush triumphantly declared America as Sole Superpower. Cheney’s deputy secretary, Paul Wolfowitz, was responsible for developing a Defense Planning Guidance, 1994-1999. It was blunt, and later described by Senator Ted Kennedy as imperialist. In part the unedited Wolfowitz Doctrine declared

“Our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival, either on the territory of the former Soviet Union or elsewhere…to prevent any hostile power from dominating a region whose resources would, under consolidated control, be sufficient to generate global power.”

Under George W. Bush the Wolfowitz Doctrine re-emerged as the Bush Doctrine after 2002 in the runup to the Iraq war, declaring unilateralism and use of preventative war as central to US policy.